Cheryl Dunye

Cheryl Dunye (born May 13, 1966) is a Liberian-American film director, producer, screenwriter, editor and actress.

Dunye's work often concerns themes of race, sexuality, and gender, particularly issues relating to black lesbians.

These works, spanning from 1990 to 1994, explore themes of race, sexuality, family, relationships, whiteness, and the intricacies of white and black lesbian dating culture.

Dunye's early works were produced with a low budget and often starred Dunye herself as lead actress.

"(Experimental documentary, 1990) The story of a black lesbian's relationship with a white, upper middle class high school girl."

This experimental documentary follows Dunye's narration of her friendship with a high school classmate, Janine Sorelli.

"(Experimental narrative, 1991) A self-reflexive look at the sexuality of a young black lesbian."

This film follows the sexual pursuits of Shae Clarke, an African American lesbian.

Clarke, played by Dunye, defines and readily demonstrates her "new approach to women."

The Criterion Channel describes it as "A smart, hilarious, and self-reflexive look at the sexuality of a young black lesbian."

"(Experimental documentary, 1992)."

This three-minute experimental documentary features Dunye's voice in conversation with an offscreen character, played over photography and found footage.

Dunye's narration describes the different meanings of the term vanilla sex which, to white lesbians, meant sex without toys while, to black lesbians, meant sex with white women.

Dunye uses the opportunity to explore and discuss the different meanings of such a term in two different contexts between the white and black lesbian communities.

"(Video montage, 1993) Dunye's relationship with her brother is examined in this mixture of appropriated film footage, super 8mm home movies & Dunye's special brand of humor."

"(Experimental narrative, 1993) Sparks fly as racial, sexual and social politics intermingle at a lesbian potluck."

"(Narrative, 1994) Cheryl, playing herself, humorously experiences the mysteries of lesbian dating in the 90s."

Greetings From Africa (1994) is a narrative short film featuring Dunye as Cheryl, a young adult black lesbian working to navigate the complicated world of lesbian dating in the 90s.

The film opens with Cheryl narrating in front of a camera about her efforts to get back into the dating scene while attempting to avoid the common pitfall of lesbian serial monogamy.

After this opening, Cheryl meets L, a white woman, at a party.

L and Cheryl hit it off, and soon meet for a date.

Before their date, Cheryl and a friend discuss L, mentioning that Cheryl's friend knew someone had recently seen L at the African American studies department office at a nearby school.

Later, after Cheryl has not heard from L for a few days, she attends a party hoping to see L there.

Cheryl strikes up a conversation with another black queer woman at the party.

She is known as the first out black lesbian to ever direct a feature film with her 1996 film The Watermelon Woman. She runs the production company Jingletown Films based in Oakland, California.

Dunye was born in Monrovia, Liberia and grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

She first attended Michigan State University where she was in the political theory program due to her desire to make a change and have an impact on the world.

When she realized she could use media as a tool in her political activism, she ended up in the filmmaking program at Temple University in Philadelphia.

She received her BA from Temple and her MFA from Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of Art.

While at Temple University, Dunye made her first ever video project for her senior thesis which was a montage of images of things like newspapers that she had recorded and played over a reading of a poem by Sapphire called "Wild Thing."

She has taught at the UCLA, UC Santa Cruz, Pitzer College, Claremont Graduate University, Pomona College, California Institute of the Arts, The New School of Social Research, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and San Francisco State University.

Dunye began her career with six short films which have been collected on DVD as The Early Works of Cheryl Dunye.

Most of these videos feature the use of mixed media, a blurring of fact and fiction and explored issues relating to the director's experience as a black lesbian filmmaker.

These films are early examples of "Dunyementaries," a self-coined blend of narrative and documentary techniques that Dunye describes as "a mix of film, video, friends, and a lot of heart."

Dunye describes her crush on Janine that spanned from 9th to 12th grade.

Dunye explains that Janine's wealthy middle class lifestyle made Dunye feel out of place and uncomfortable with her own identity.

Their relationship ended after their senior year of high school when, after Dunye came out to Janine as gay, Janine's mother offered to pay for a doctor to "talk to somebody about [her] problems."

Dunye describes her experience working on Janine as an external expression of her personal struggles.

Dunye says, "The issues I raise in Janine aren't easy ones, and I struggle with them daily. Rather than internalizing them, I put them in my videos."

As Dunye says when discussing Janine, she finds it important to represent herself in her work "physically and autobiographically," and states that her work has two goals: to educate audiences unfamiliar with black lesbians and their communities and to empower and entertain other black lesbians through representation in her films.